Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries has been loved by all since its debut. A New York Times bestseller, Heart Berries was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction, was selected by no other than Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018. Terese Marie Mailhot’s work has appeared in Guernica, Pacific Standard, Granta, Mother Jones, Medium, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, the Electra Quinney Award for Published Stories, a Clara Johnson Award, and she is also the recipient of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. Room is honoured to have Terese Marie Mailhot judge our 2019 Creative Non-Fiction Contest and we were beyond thrilled to sit down for a chat.

Reading Room

crisis: a time of great difficulty trouble or danger a time
when a difficult or important decision must be made
the turning point of a disease when an important
change takes place indicating either recovery or death

We're still talking about sexual assault because it's still happening. And although the #MeToo movement has motivated us to have important conversations about sexual violence and trauma, we hardly ever talk about the aftermath of sexual assault. How do survivors navigate their lives post-trauma? What helps them "heal" and "move on"?

Amy Robichaud is an advocate and speaker, and the new executive director of Dress For Success Vancouver, a non-profit organization dedicated to economically empowering women by providing career resources, professional attire, and training in areas such as leadership and interview skills. In the following interview she discusses how Dress For Success contributes to anti-poverty work, the "invisible power" one can draw from a favourite outfit, and more.

Friend and TV writing goddess Jocelyn Tennant is back! This week Mica and Joss are chatting about all things TV, with a focus on three shows (Shrill, Pen15, and Fleabag) that they are currently obsessed with. Alongside these shows, they chat about the representation of fat women on screen, why "puberty TV" can be so cathartic for millennial women, and why Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the creator of Fleabag, is quite possibly the coolest person alive.

Whatever, Iceberg chronicles an all-too-familiar queer romance interwoven with polyamory, single parenting, chronic pain, poverty, and aging. Despite the specificity of Ziniuk’s writing, the collection remains relatable for anyone who has ever been in a badly timed romance or burned by a lover.

Each of the fifteen stories, mostly populated by female protagonists at less-than-perfect moments in their lives, show the work of a generous writer committed to creating characters unapologetically being themselves in all their flawed, misguided glory.

Room’s forth cover art contest closed earlier this year and here are the thirteen shortlisted artworks by twelve different artists! We had the honour of having Syrus Marcus Ware—visual artist, activist, curator and educator—judge our contest this time around. Stay tuned as we are announcing the top three artworks next week.

In addition to Afua Cooper and Shauntay Grant, two of the writers featured in “20 Black Writers to Read All Year Round”, Nova Scotia has been home to many Black poets and novelists. Here is a list of some of our favourite emerging and established writers from the African Nova Scotian community. (Photo: Abena Beloved Green).